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Get Speed Dial For Your Mac

Siri on the Mac, specifically, macOS Sierra, can be helpful but may need some time to become useful. Yes, Siri opens apps, switches from app to app, and answers the standard questions we’ve asked of her for a few years on iPhone, but there are issue to overcome.

Here’s an example. I asked Siri on my Mac to call my wife on the phone. My wife has multiple entries and multiple phone numbers in Contacts and Siri seems to get hung up there and always responds with “Which name?” then listing all the available numbers but never selecting the right one. That brought to mind a Mac app I tried out recently. It’s called SpeedDial and you can guess from the name what it does. It’s like Siri, but with clicks. Oh, unlike Siri, it works every time.

Basically, SpeedDial works this way. It resides in the Mac’s Menubar so it’s available from within any open application. It handles phone calls through your iPhone with a click, lets you send text messages to favorites or contacts with a click, and even initiates FaceTime calls.

One click to the Menubar drops down the Favorites you use the most often and the icons represent different ways to connect; Messages, Phone Call, FaceTime, etc. Change an entry in Contacts and SpeedDial automatically resets. Set it to automatically open when your Mac starts up.

If you’re into dark mode on your Mac, there’s a dark mode available to match.

There’s just nothing to not like here.

SpeedDial is one of those nifty utilities that’s always available, works flawlessly, and if you use your Mac to initiate phone calls on your iPhone, make FaceTime calls, or send text messages through Messages, it’s about as useful as functionality can be for less than a couple of bucks.

To make it work, of course, you’ll need a recent Mac which can handle the Continuity feature in OS X and macOS Sierra, a nearby iPhone, and have Messages, FaceTime, and Contacts already set up.